Canada

. . . For more than 40 years, Canada has been a wellhead of Koch’s burgeoning fortune in oil, refineries, pipelines, petroleum products and financial trading as well as an expanding list of diverse interests — producing an estimated $115 billion in revenues last year, according to Forbes.

New scientific research has found that wild-caught foods in northern Alberta have higher-than-normal levels of pollutants the study associates with oil sands production, but First Nations are already shifting away from their traditional diets out of fears over contamination.

The research, to be officially released on Monday, found contaminants in traditional foods such as muskrat and moose, and that aboriginal community members feel less healthy than they did a generation ago, according to an executive summary obtained by The Globe and Mail.

. . . Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger declared a province-wide state of emergency on Friday and asked the federal government to have Canadian Armed Forces soldiers in Manitoba to assist with flood relief efforts.

On Saturday, Selinger said upwards of about 400 troops could be on the ground, helping out with sandbagging and assisting homes in flooding hotspots.

Remember back in 2006 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper boasted confidently that Canada was about to become an “energy superpower?”

A February 2014 report by the International Monetary Fund shows that Canada never was and, probably now, never will be. The IMF report is similar to one by the Canadian Energy Research Institute in 2011. It found that 94 per cent of the economic benefits of expanding the oil sands remain in just one province, Alberta.

The picture painted is startling:

By 2012, the U.S. was awash in light sweet crude from (fracked) shale oil deposits in Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere. With Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries configured to take heavy oil, that light crude has been looking for a refining home.

Stephen Harper insists he won’t be pressured to alter his business-friendly climate-change policies, saying the Conservative government is simply more upfront than leadership in some other countries about its intention to avoid abatement measures that hurt jobs and economic growth. “No matter what they say, no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country. We are just a little more frank about that,” the Prime Minister said. This unapologetic tone comes as one of Mr.

The Peoples for Mother Earth march is nearing the end of its 34 day cross-province journey through towns and cities in Québec which would be affected by prospective Tar Sands pipelines. In the past month, as the marchers have made their way from Cacouna towards their end-goal of Kanehsata:ke, they have taken actions and seen concrete effects beginning to emerge already.

Canadian workers have been remarkably patient. For over three decades now—a generation—their wages have been restrained, workloads intensified and social benefits eroded, the promise being that this will ultimately bring security for themselves and their families. What they got was more of the same while class inequality reached the highest levels in over 80 years. Where is the anger? When the Great Financial Crisis hit, first and deeper in the US then in Canada, the Canadian state acted decisively to subsidize banks and imposed austerity on workers to pay for this. Where was the rage?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched into a full-on attack on the "evils of communism" at a fundraiser on Friday for a monument to its victims: "During the 20th century, communism's poisonous ideology and ruthless practices slowly bled into countries around the world, on almost every continent," Harper said. The evening's event aimed help raise money for Tribute to Liberty, which aims for a permanent memorial in Ottawa to communism's "hundreds of millions" of victims. You can hear the full speech below.